So how do you actually generate money ?

[Yazoo]

What you get every day is barely enough to have enough staff. And hiring staff costs a lot of money.

So once all the Grants are done, how can you generate money ?

[a__gun]

At the moment the finances are unbalanced. You pretty much have to edit your save game for more money, bulid workshops for money, or limit your intake to drive down expenses.

[Mas Tnega]

Assuming you don't want to resort to adding fan-made grants or edit your save, just devote some space to being Workshops. You'll get $2/square. If you really want, you could put it all in the area across the road. And on the road. And above and below the delivery/garbage areas. And through corridors if they turn corners. You can get a lot of money out of it a lot easier than you would initially think.

[Andersen]

I'm currently running a prison with ~100 prisoners and 25ish staff... I earn enough from the daily founds to make a new 8-man cellblock every day.

Daily riots, a lot of repairs every day, redirecting manpower, moving guards... Whatever you do, don't hire doctors.
I have like 70 prisoners who need medical attention, and a lot of them are just laying around wherever they dropped.. Only way to cope without editing or turning to mods

[Yazoo]

Thanks for the Workshop trick, I can't believe I hadn't tried this room yet. I turned all the areas outside my prison to workshops and i won like 5/6k a day which is probably enough to sustain a pretty big prison.
I'm going to create one from scratch and do this from the start to see if I can do something worthwile.

Also, where is the money line stored in the save file ? I can't seem to find it :/

[Mas Tnega]

It comes a little after the regime. It looks like this:

Code: Select all

BEGIN Finance    Balance 182840.  END

[DonkSpirit]

I can't hear it anymore.... How did I get 300 prisoners (medium map) WITHOUT editing the save files, guys? I even didn't have ANY riots EVER! Build a fence around the whole area. Build a big holding cell with lots of beds, some TVs and toilets. Make sure that the guards are always around where the prisonsers are. Everything else is pretty easy from there on. If you want, you can build a huge workshop (gives you money per tile).

I'm about to set up my second big 300 inmates prison. So it can be done. You have to understand, what works and what doesn't work. Common room doesnt work, so put pool tables in yard and TVs in holding cells and cells. Easy game.

[a__gun]

I can't hear it anymore.... How did I get 300 prisoners (medium map) WITHOUT editing the save files, guys? I even didn't have ANY riots EVER! Build a fence around the whole area. Build a big holding cell with lots of beds, some TVs and toilets. Make sure that the guards are always around where the prisonsers are. Everything else is pretty easy from there on. If you want, you can build a huge workshop (gives you money per tile).

I'm about to set up my second big 300 inmates prison. So it can be done. You have to understand, what works and what doesn't work. Common room doesnt work, so put pool tables in yard and TVs in holding cells and cells. Easy game.

Yes you can just have big holding cells, but some people want to actually build a nice prison with individual cells and this takes money

[DonkSpirit]

@ a_gun

I didn't say, that you can't build any individual cells. You just shouldn't start with them. If you want to play it with no escapes, no riots and "happy" prisoners, you have to build a big holding cell first.

[Saranis]

I'm currently running a prison with ~100 prisoners and 25ish staff... I earn enough from the daily founds to make a new 8-man cellblock every day.

Daily riots, a lot of repairs every day, redirecting manpower, moving guards... Whatever you do, don't hire doctors.
I have like 70 prisoners who need medical attention, and a lot of them are just laying around wherever they dropped.. Only way to cope without editing or turning to mods

You must be doing something wrong, I have over 150 prisoners 50+ staff and dont have any riots.

[koshensky]

@ a_gun

I didn't say, that you can't build any individual cells. You just shouldn't start with them. If you want to play it with no escapes, no riots and "happy" prisoners, you have to build a big holding cell first.

I agree with Saranis. I have 96 prisoners, no riots or injuries of any form and completely ignored holding cells because they just cause problems with the AI when they need to poo.

In terms of earning money - once you've got a decent prison, fire your workers. Workers take up a huge amount of income per day, and unless you're actually building a huge amount of new features you can easily cope with one or two.

I left my game on fast for a few hours in the background by mistake and came back to find myself with 800k, which was quite nice

If you receive all the grants you get about 100k though, which is easily enough for a decent sized prison

[Ric666]

you can easily build a fully successful profitable prison without using cheats. Or savegame editing, whatever you want to call it.

You just need patience. Most people won't want to wait around for a few ingame days to get some money to build that new wing. I do however still use workshops but they make the game so laggy....

I also now use the additional grants mod which has made it way too easy now..lol..